Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering (42 page)

Immediately upon receipt of these orders, you are directed to personally report aboard Fleet Transport CSS
Lewis,
and you are further directed to then order CSS
Lewis,
in company with Fleet Tanker CSS
Bentley,
to proceed at best speed to the gas giant Themis in the Socar system. At Themis, CSS
Lewis
and CSS
Bentley
will rendezvous with Fleet Intelligence
Infiltrator
class vessel CSS
Ghost
and provide fuel and provisions as requested. You will also instruct the officers and crew of both CSS
Lewis
and CSS
Bentley
to observe the strictest possible Presidential Top Secret Intelligence security protocols, regarding the existence of CSS
Ghost
. After refueling and reprovisioning, CSS
Ghost
will depart from the Socar system under independent orders, while CSS
Lewis
and CSS
Bentley
return to Socar, where they are to be fully replenished by other TF-21 assets.

Upon completion of replenishment of CSS
Lewis
and CSS
Bentley
, you are then instructed to notify Captain Richard Bonhoeffer that he has been issued a brevet promotion to the rank of commodore, by order of the secretary of defense of the Confederate Stellar Accord.

You will then issue movement orders to CSS
Lewis
, CSS
Bentley
and three scout class vessels of your own selection to detached duty under the command of Commodore Bonhoeffer to the gas giant Asteria in the uninhabited Koios system, two light-years distance from the Maylan system, where they will act as liaison and provide refueling and replenishment to CSS
Ghost
as required. The scout-class vessels in Commodore Bonhoeffer’s detached command are to immediately forward all message information received from CSS
Ghost
directly to destinations as directed by Commander Michael P. Diamond, Commanding Officer, CSS
Ghost
.

You will advise Commodore Bonhoeffer and the crews of the selected scout ships to observe the strictest possible Presidential Top Secret Intelligence security protocols regarding the existence of CSS
Ghost
. This detached command under Commodore Bonhoeffer is to be designated the code name: Grocery Store.

You are also authorized to advise Commodore Bonhoeffer that his command shall be provided relief on a three-month, rotating schedule. After departure of Grocery Store from Socar, you are further directed to assume direct command of the CSS
Independence
in addition to your duties as Commanding Officer of Task Force-21.

Admiral Christopher Rawley

Commanding Officer in Charge, 2nd Fleet

Gotta be that weird thing they were covering with that giant tarp at Mystic,
thought Stillman.
Rich is definitely gonna have mixed emotions about this one… getting brevetted to Commodore and an independent command is something every captain in the Fleet only dreams of, but losing command of an attack carrier to get it?

Stillman printed out a hard copy of the orders and then returned to his quarters where he locked the orders in his personal safe. When Stillman reentered the bridge, Bonhoeffer came close and confidentially asked, “Anything you can talk about, Admiral?”

“Not right now, Rich,” replied Stillman. “But you’ll definitely be in on it later. Order the
Lewis
and the
Bentley
to form up on our starboard side, and get me a shuttle ready. You have command of the task force, until I get back.”

Stillman was so engrossed in the strangeness of his new orders, it took him another three days for his own brevet promotion to vice admiral to finally register.

President Marrot dispatched political flunkies to each of the six Confederacy planets early, so each would arrive exactly at the end of his thirty-day ultimatum date. All six of those delegations were met by an armed squad of Confederate Marines in full combat armor, who turned them away — not even allowing them to disembark from their spaceplanes. April was going to be a very interesting month.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
-- David Friedman.

The Planetoid Discol, City of Waston

April - June, 3861

“They did — what?” asked President Pierre Marrot incredulously.

“They wouldn’t even let us off the spaceplane, Mr. President. Armed troops in full combat armor met us on arrival and would not let us deplane.”

“Well, I guess they’ve given us our answer.” As the emissary left the president’s office, Marrot buzzed his Chief of Staff. “Get me the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs and the Chief of Fleet Operations. Have them meet me in the situation room, ASAP.” Forty-five minutes later, the last of the summoned group arrived in the situation room.

“Well, we have our answer from the rebels,” said the president to the assembled group. “They wouldn’t even let my representatives off their spaceplanes. I gave them a chance to do this the easy way, and they spit in my face. They want me to play rough, so I’ll oblige them.

“I want plans drawn up to take all six of those rebellious planets back, by force if necessary, and I want them tomorrow.”

It took several days for President Marrot’s attack orders for a coordinated strike against the Confederacy to be distributed to the various Fleet units stationed in Ginia, Nocar, Tucky, Tensee, Souri and Arka to reach their intended destinations. It took another several days for news of the mass mutiny which followed to reach Unionist bases, brought there by the very few Fleet units to return.

Ginia’s legislators and the general public were outraged that the federal government had actually ordered an armed invasion of the seceded planets. Ginia had always had very strong Southern roots, but passions toward secession had never been strong there. The president’s attempted invasion changed that.

When Governor Lawrence Westin of Ginia heard the federal government had attempted to use Ginia as a jump-off point for Fleet units ordered to attack the Confederacy, he was incensed and immediately took the matter before the planetary legislature. Within two days, Ginia convened her own secessionist convention and within three more, she ratified her own
Ordinance of Secession
.

Ginia was the very first planet settled by humanity, during the Great Diaspora, from old Earth. As the first, it was only natural that Ginia would become the primary cultural, social and political leader for the entire region, giving her immense prestige. Ginia had the highest population of any planet in the South and possessed as much industrial capacity as the six original Confederate planets combined, so Ginia had always been looked to as the de facto leader of the entire South.

After Ginia seceded, Nocar, Tensee and Arka determined to reexamine the matter with utmost urgency, and after solemn debate, all three convened their own secessionist conventions. It really surprised no one when the Confederate Congress moved the Confederate capital from Gomery, Bama to Rikmon, Ginia. It seemed only right and natural to do so.

The Alliance stock market had not yet fully recovered from the initial six secessions, and investors became frantic at the news that Ginia’s secessionist convention had voted to secede. Ginia’s secession wasn’t actually official until after the planet’s voters ratified the decision of the convention, but investors' nerves were frayed by the news. Ginia’s voters ratified her secession in May and when the news arrived, Nocar and Arka also seceded, following Ginia into the Confederacy.

When news arrived that Ginia, Nocar and Arka had all seceded, the Alliance stock market panicked and went into free-fall, forcing the federal government to step in and suspend trading. The Securities & Exchange Commission kept the market closed for three days to let trepidation subside, and then reopened
limited
trading, with restrictions on the amount the average market value could drop in a single day before automatic trading suspensions kicked in. Those SEC limits were reached three times during the first five days.

With Ginia’s secession, the governor of Maylan called for a secessionist convention, but in May, Alliance Fleet Marines were combat-dropped into the Maylan capital and established martial law, preventing the convention from meeting. Maylan legislators known to harbor pro-secessionist views were arrested as subversives, and the writ of habeas corpus was suspended. The SEC restrictions were still in place when Tensee seceded in early June, sending the entire Northern economy into complete chaos.

Instead of gaining the six rebellious planets back as he’d intended, all Marrot’s attack order had gotten him was four more planetary secessions, the loss of dozens of major warships, and an economic crisis of biblical proportions. The
Confederacy
however, increased their membership to ten, and gained an entire third fleet.

Militarily, the Alliance Fleet was left in almost as much chaos as the Alliance stock market. During the
Great Mutiny
, those Fleet units remaining loyal to the federal government had found themselves heavily outnumbered and outgunned by the mutineers. As discretion is indeed the greater part of valor, rather than initiate hostilities against a much superior force, most simply
skedaddled
back across the Kallarine Gap to the nearest Fleet base within the Union proper, to report in. After the latest round of secessions, thousands more Fleet officers resigned their commissions, and tens of thousands more enlisted men deserted and simply disappeared like mist before the rising sun.

The Alliance Fleet, stunned by the mass mutiny and defections, literally had to regroup and determine exactly what assets in ships and crews it actually had left to work with. As a majority of Fleet personnel had been from the South, the Fleet found itself with a
lot
more ships than it could fully crew. Fleet crews were shuffled around by disciplines, plugging holes as necessary.

Experienced crew personnel were at a premium. Virtually everyone with experience remaining in the Alliance Fleet received promotions of at least two grades. Fleet retirees were offered significant financial incentives to put their retirements on hold and return to active duty. The president was even forced to go on holovision to issue a public call for experienced spacers to volunteer for Fleet duty, from within the ranks of the commercial space industries, in a desperate attempt to fill the gaping holes within Fleet’s ranks. Academy cadets were used to train civilian spaceworker volunteers in the military disciplines.

In the scramble to reorganize the Alliance Fleet, someone eventually remembered all of the fighters and pilots who came off of the carriers that President Buchwald sent into mothballs several months earlier. The Fleet was highly embarrassed by the fact they had apparently “misplaced” them. In an ensuing investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, classified records came to light indicating that President Buchwald had secretly authorized the sale of all of those fighters to Sextus for $396 billion. This had been paid for, in gold, delivered to and signed for by the Federal Reserve Depository in Norlans, Lusia, and the pilots had been furloughed and gone home. Personnel records pinpointed ninety-six pilots from throughout the North were found and their story verified, so it was assumed the records for the crews from Southern origins were accurate and they had been discharged and returned to their homes as well. Those Northern pilots were recalled to active duty.

After President Marrot instructed the Attorney General to issue an arrest warrant for former President Buchwald, ABI agents on his home planet of Dela found no trace of the ex-president, nor were ABI agents able to locate the pilots and crew of the Fleet-1 spaceplane that had carried the then president away from Waston the morning of President Marrot’s inauguration. The Secret Service had no records of Buchwald’s having left the White House that morning, but discovered that two Secret Service agents who had been assigned to the president at the time had also gone missing. Records indicated they had left on vacation and never returned to Waston.

Accusations and recriminations reverberated throughout the federal government to such extent that President Marrot called for a special prosecutor to be named to direct a massive ABI investigation into allegations of misconduct, malfeasance and possible treason. ABI Director William Hannity assigned primary responsibility for conducting the investigation to the Special Agent in Charge of the Major Crimes Unit, Fredrick Danforth.

The people of Waston, fearing the rebels would use the mutineers’ ships to attack the capital, clamored for protection — forcing the president to order the transfer 40 percent of remaining Fleet assets to Discol, most with merely skeleton crews in an act of pure theater, to quell public anxiety. The Alliance Fleet was hollow. A concerted effort by the Confederate Fleet right at that moment might have crippled the Alliance militarily, perhaps succeeding in capturing Waston, and enticing Maylan to join the Confederacy as well. The Fleet knew this and the Confederacy knew this, but the Confederacy did not strike, as might have been militarily advisable. The Confederacy did not want a war. They simply asked to be left alone to govern themselves.

International stock markets were also in pandemonium, as a direct result of the chaos in the Alliance market. A number of foreign powers threatened outright recognition of the Confederacy in retaliation for the damage the Alliance’s internal political turmoil had wrecked on their economies. The Confederacy realized they would greatly benefit from recognition by the international community as a legitimate, independent member in the family of nations. Such recognition would certainly alter their view of any potential conflict between North and South, from a purely internal matter to an international one.

If the Confederacy could gain international recognition, any military intervention undertaken by the Union government would brand the Alliance as an aggressor nation, attacking a legitimate, independent one and potentially inviting military intervention against the Alliance. Thus, the Confederacy had no wish to be seen as having starting hostilities.